


Going down to Rosedale

by sixchord



Series: Crossroads [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hale Family Feels, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 03:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixchord/pseuds/sixchord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I am not getting therapy,” he says, grabbing the Cheetos from her.</p><p>“Yeah, okay,” she says, waving her still orange hands in the air.  “Sure, it’s really healthy to repress the fact that all three of your major girlfriends died horribly violent deaths, our family died in a fire, everybody hates you, you got arrested for something you didn’t—“</p><p>“I will turn this car around,” he says.  “And you can live with Peter forever.”</p><p>Or, the one where Derek and Cora leave Beacon Hills and sass their way to Chicago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going down to Rosedale

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set after the season three finale.
> 
> This fic was written when I should have been working on my Teen Wolf Big Bang.
> 
> The title comes from Eric Clapton's Crossroads (originally from Robert Johnson's Travelin' Riverside Blues) and the quoted Blink-182 song in the fic is I Miss You.
> 
> Also, if you like this, it's probably going to become a series. Just saying. I feel that awful "series" vibe coming on...

The first thing she says when they pull away is, “You’re a dumbass.”

He just raises his eyebrows and keeps his eyes on the road.

“I would have been okay, eventually.  You shouldn’t have given it up, not with Peter around.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her staring at the side of his face.  “I don’t trust him.  There’s just something—look, he comes back from the dead, but he doesn’t do anything?  He just goes back to being mild-mannered Uncle Peter, who’s a total douchebag but harmless?”  She kicks her feet up on the dashboard.  “I don’t buy it.”

“We all hate Peter,” he says, shrugging.  “It’s a fact of life.  He’s a shitty person, we don’t trust him as far as Stiles could throw him, we move on.”

“We didn’t have to leave,” she says softly, twisting her fingers into the pocket of her hoodie.

“Yeah, we did.”  He finally looks at her, recognizes their mom in the stubborn look on her face.  “Tell me one good reason we should have stayed.”

She’s quiet, because Beacon Hills was no good for them and she has to know it.  She sighs, reaching into the glove box for a wrinkled atlas.  “So, where are we going?”

“How does Chicago sound?”  He’d been there once with Laura, on the way to New York.  They had good pizza, lots of pubs, an entire theater district where Laura made him go see Les Mis with her.

She just sits there, sulking with her knees bent up.  Her boots are getting the dash dusty, but he can’t really bring himself to care.  Dust washes off.  “Will you miss them?” she says, turning to look out the window at the blurring forest.

“No,” he lies, and he can see her smirking because of course she knows he’s lying.  He can’t even figure out why he has to lie in the first place.  Scott and Stiles got him arrested, got him almost killed, left him for dead.  Lydia used him to bring back Peter.  Allison went on a rampage against his pack, and Isaac always liked Scott better anyways.  But even though he should hate all of them, there’s an annoyingly insistent part of him that can’t.

“We can’t stay away forever,” she says.  She flips through the atlas to Illinois.  “There’s that shit about Beacon Hills being a beacon again.  The Frankentwins are still around, what’s up with that, is nobody bothered by the fact that they were still evil yesterday and killed B—“  She breaks off and traces a finger over an interstate.  “You know we have to go back.  We have to go when Scott calls.”

“No, we don’t,” he says.

“I don’t want to be an omega,” she says.  “And I don’t want us to be a pair of omegas, because that’s pathetic, okay?  I miss being part of a pack, I miss—and you were a dumbass and gave it all up, and now we’re—what are we?”  She turns to him, her forehead wrinkling.  They leave Beacon County.

He feels the tug of the pack in his head.  “We aren’t omegas,” he says, clenching his hands around the wheel.  “As long as Scott doesn’t do something stupid and get himself killed, we won’t be omegas.”  He fishes a bag of Cheetos out from between the seats and offers it to her.  “Although I don’t think Peter will be happy with the new order.”

Cora starts laughing, scrunching the bag in her hands.  She opens it carefully.  “Oh my god, the irony.  Suddenly he’s beta to the kid he turned?  That’s gotta be a first.”  She licks the orange dust off her fingers.  “Why Chicago?”

“There are lots of public high schools,” he says.

“Noooooo, Derek,” she whines, letting her head loll over to pout at him.  “I hate high school, can’t I get like an online GED or something?  C’mon, you’re supposed to be my cool older brother, let me off the hook?”

“I’ll think about it,” he says.  If he’s totally honest with himself, he’ll probably let her do just about anything she wants.  He’s going to be a terrible guardian.

“Awesome.”  She slides further down into her seat and her boots inch closer to the windshield.  “Can we get a cool apartment, like in _Friends_?  Or _Sherlock_?”

He rolls his eyes.  “You are such a teenager.”

“That was a shitty comeback,” she says.  “Okay, so we’re getting an apartment.  And you’ll get a job with health insurance, we’ll get me legally assigned as your dependent, and then you are getting some serious therapy.  Maybe me too, who knows, if we find you someone good—“

“I am not getting therapy,” he says, grabbing the Cheetos from her.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, waving her still orange hands in the air.  “Sure, it’s really healthy to repress the fact that all three of your major girlfriends died horribly violent deaths, our family died in a fire, everybody hates you, you got arrested for something you didn’t—“

“I will turn this car around,” he says.  “And you can live with Peter forever.”

She rolls her eyes and settles in to brood.  Stiles has told him many times that super intense brooding must be a Hale family trait, must have something to do with the dark features and unbearably crushing angst.  Whatever.  Sometimes Stiles is actually right, but most of the time Derek still wants to punch him.

“We could live in the suburbs,” he says.

“ _No_ ,” she cries, whipping around to stare at him.  She looks completely scandalized.  “You can’t be serious.  They would call neighborhood watch on us like every weekend.  We would have to buy a minivan.  Derek.  Would you really be happy with a minivan?”

He grits his teeth.  He misses his Camaro more than is probably healthy, and the thought of trading his current monstrosity for anything other than a new Camaro is painful.  “Okay, so the city.  We’ll look for something in the city.”

“With at least three bedrooms,” she says.

“No.”

“What if someone from the pack comes to visit?  Will we throw them on a couch?  That would be really rude,” she says, crinkling her nose.  “Although I guess that is your specialty.”

“Oh my god, I should have left you in Beacon Hills,” he says. 

“So three bedrooms,” she says.  “Two bathrooms.  I don’t want to share with you.”

“I’m going to dump you on the side of the road,” he says.

She laughs and rolls the window down, trailing her fingers in the wind.  “Then I would just hitchhike to Chicago, find you, and kill you.”  She taps her fingers on the roof of the car.  “Would that make me more powerful, do you think?  Like a super beta?”

“Let’s not find out,” he says.

They’re quiet for a while, and then she reaches over to fiddle with the radio.  A few seconds later, the guy from Blink-182 is whining about how you’re already the voice inside his head or whatever, and Derek immediately tunes to the next station using the button on the steering wheel.

“Hey, I liked that song!” Cora says.  “What, do you have a problem with oldies or something?”

“Okay, first of all,” Derek says, “that song isn’t even old enough to be called an oldie.  Second of all, my car, my rules.”

“It’s Peter’s car,” she says, crossing her arms.

“No, I’m pretty sure the deal was, he got the Camaro, and I got this, because I didn’t think we would survive the trip in a cramped car.”  He breathes loudly through his nose.  “Although I am rethinking that decision, because apparently this isn’t big enough for us either.”

“Hey, shut the fuck up, this is going to be the best road trip ever,” she says.

“Don’t say fuck,” he says automatically, tuning the radio until he finds some classic rock.

“You aren’t the boss of me,” she says.

“Okay, sure, we won’t file you as my dependent, I bet you’ll have no trouble finding your own apartment in Chicago,” he says.  “With no job, no money, no credit score, no diploma, and no insurance.”

She crosses her arms and slouches.  “I hate you.”

“Then that makes two of us,” he says.

“If you don’t see a counselor, I’ll make sure I fail my GED tests,” she says.  “Doesn’t Elaine still live in Chicago?  I bet she’d find you a job as an accountant.”

“Excuse me while I contain my enthusiasm,” he says, passing an excruciatingly slow SUV.

The radio station statics out when they pass into Nevada, hours later, and he stops for gas.  They both get cheeseburgers at the gas station, and Cora gets a big gulp full of orange soda, which Derek makes a show of side-eying.  When they get back in the car, Cora says, “Can we go see the White Sox?”

“No,” he says.  “We can go see the Cubs.”

She blinks at him.  “Derek,” she says, “are you a Cubs fan?”

“Why, are you a White Sox fan?”

She turns away and gnaws on a fingernail.  “Wow.  I just don’t know if I can live with you now.  I mean—seriously?  Derek, they never win.”

“They win sometimes,” he says.

“Yeah, but, like, against shitty teams.”

“I am leaving you in Las Vegas,” he says.

“But Derek, what about our tastefully decorated three bed, two bath apartment, paid for with insurance money and your accountant’s paycheck?  What about my GED?”  She puts a hand on his arm.  “What about deep dish pizza?”

He purses his mouth and stares at the yellow dashed line in the center of the highway.  “Okay, fine, I’ll keep you, but only because of the pizza.”

She smiles.  “This is going to be fun.”

“Interesting,” he says.  “I think you mean interesting.”

She kicks back and finally smudges her dirty boots into the windshield.  She grins and laces her hands behind her head.  “Yeah.  Interesting.  We can do interesting.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you like what you see, come check me out on tumblr! I'm sixchord over there too, and just about everywhere else on the internets.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!


End file.
